Friday Date Night

Ryan and I have a tradition...we try to do a date night once a week. Sometimes its on Friday and sometimes its on Saturday. It just depends on other plans. Its something that our pastor, Pieter Van Waarde, encouraged when we went through our pre-marital counceling at our church (I miss you Woodcrest!). He stressed the importance of dating even after you've gotten married. Piet's a smart man!

Work has been a little on the crazy side for me lately. I've been putting in lots of long hours and have had to work the last several weekends. The plan for this week: I knew that I'd have to spend part of Saturday at the office, so I was going to leave on time Friday and we'd do date night. Well it became glaringly obvious at about 3:00 on Friday that the plan wasn't going to happen. Things were coming up at work that we hadn't anticipated and it was going to cause me to stay late on Friday too. I called Ryan and told him - he was bummed. He leaves town next week for the entire week and we were both sad that we weren't going to get to hang on Friday night.

I was still working away at 7:45 when Ryan called and said he was on his way over to my office to pick me up for dinner. He wanted to know if 1) I wanted him to pick up dinner so I could work through or 2) pick me up and get me out of the office for a break. I chose #2.

He picked me up around 8:00 and we just headed down the street to Chipotle. It was good to see him, get out of the office and get some food in my stomach. After a quick stop at Petsmart to get Pinky some food he drove me back to my office.

Here's the part I wasn't expecting....he had planned to spend Friday night date night in my office. He had packed a cooler, a camping chair, his laptop and a movie. :-) He set up in the back of my cube and I continued to work while he watched and I listened to Into The Wild. It was a good choice....I didn't have to see the screen to know what was going on. Although I think I missed out on some gorgeous scenary!

I don't know many other guys that would have thought of that. Ryan's truly something special. Our date night wasn't as conventional as usual, but it meant so much to me.